CHU

I've started using statuspage.io It's free for two admins and upto 100 subscribers, it can get pricey after that. So far just throwing all the maintenance windows on there, and outages as they come. It has a nice postmortem feature to report past stuff as well, which is good for completeness. Staff uptake will be another matter, but once it's a font of knowledge I'll push it with leadership, then start informing people to check, link it from staff sharepoint etc.

Thanks Andy, I think there’s that issue and also we hadn’t applied permissions in the Sims Admin panel for Options either. You’d think a no permission message wouldn’t be too hard to implement! Thanks Craig

We're having this issue, none of the students have submitted option choices, their using a variety of devices at home, laptops, mobiles etc. So I can't see it being an IE setting?

Hi, where are you seeing the shared device pricing? I'm just looking at this and for Schools/Universities I can only see £278.04 per year, per device. Our CS5.5 site licence is on all machines, 300+ so that'd be over £80,000 a year.... which seems insane! I can see CS5.5 remaining in our future....

Are you doing it out of hours? There's no one else using Sims on the server, like a client open on another user or anything? I would try the Summer installer and see if that goes through ok and then let Solus try and patch again. Craig

Hmmm, can you run the full installer manually on MIS server? I always have an issue where the Solus deployment service fails to install and have to manually do it on MIS.

Hi, The patch is not a full install, release the patch and it will install Full release if not installed already and then SOLUS will apply the patch which takes a fraction of the time. Craig

Let me know how you all get on

Hi everyone, Just had through our renewal for RM Unify with a whopping 50% price increase. Has anyone else seen this outrageous hike, and what alternatives are there? Currently looking like we're over the barrel so to speak. We currently use RM Unify to provision O365 and for SSO/saved password to several key apps. But don't plan to use it to write-back to AD and was considering disconnecting it from O365 in favour of MS's own Sims tool. Thanks Craig

Been in a similar situation ourselves. Only it was finance chasing for what lines are in use. We’ve been paying for 8 analogue lines for years and no idea what they were for. Finance should know what they pay for, if they’re not helping. Look at what services need lines and maybe work backwards contacting the companies. Redcare - fire alarm Alarm monitoring BMS LA control Remote utility meter reading Lift emergency line FAX / Franking machine Main number Quite a few of ours were old fax lines and such to a lower school that was bulldozed 9 years ago. Our telephony provider is Lloyds-IP and they put the lines on temporary cease for a month. If no one kicked up saying hey we’ve lost connection then we’ve been cancelling them. Good luck

Each student who is CA has been given a second account, I used username_CA so they all know their logins. I have the new CA accounts under an OU within Students, but they're also in a AD group so that I can assign GPO's to them. In Impero then you just create a user group based on that AD group and when any user signs in they are under control of that group.

We have Impero, created a user group of the new CA accounts and the teacher locks/unlocks the group at lessons. We also use it for banning USB and Internet for the group. The logging side will also allow us to see if someone attempts to use it outside of lessons.

We brought in 10 interactive screens at Christmas, hoping for another ten in October. Had to settle for 64” same width as current IWB but 16:9 so maybe a foot shorter, just let them rejig there PowerPoint designs. Our projectors are all 6yrs old now, lost 5 in the last school year due to ballast, got 4 of those repaired for 250 each. Informed head that it’s not a solution and that screens are the way forward she wants teacher consultation tho bleh. As to whether we buy projectors or screens hmmmm. The cost for a complete unit IWB+Projector is the same as the screens. Not counting bulbs! No brainer for IT!

Vickers, leasing us Ricoh equipment. Great service and remote metering so we always have toner on hand but not so much that it’s a pain to store. We moved from BBT because of cost.

Fantastic productive summer here, minor snag list to work through, but on the whole our two man team has smashed it. New hosts and SAN installed, one IT suite hardware refreshed, 250 PC’s blown out, BIOS updates, security tagged, new power leads and disinfected (100 to go), new lapsafe setup and deployed, 90 PC moves, 5 projectors replaced, all switch firmware updated, new staff and student accounts manually created (well custom script), staff ID cards produced and all cables velcroed and tidied just in time for the PAT testers to arrive on the 29th August. [emoji36] All in all gone very well, big improvement in last summer when I broke my ankle in the last week of term! Craig